The Real State of the Unionby Marty Jezer
www.dissidentvoice.org
February 2, 2005

George
W. Bush presents his State of the Union address tonight. He’s sure to talk
about spreading “freedom” and “democracy” the world over, the “ownership
society,” and the greatness of our country. Here are some subjects he won’t
talk about:

In The New York Review of Books (2/10/2005), historian Tony Judt
cites authoritative data comparing the United States with Europe and the
rest of the world. Where we were once “number one” in most everything from
health and wealth to basketball, those days are going fast if not already
gone

Of course, as Judt writes, “The U.S. is an excellent place to be rich.” As
well it is: One percent of our people control 38 percent of our wealth. And
American CEOs are paid 475 times more than their underlings, up from 40
times in 1980 when the Reagan administration took office. By contrast, the
ratio between what CEOs and their workers make in other countries is 24:1 in
Great Britain, 15:1 in France and 13:1 in Sweden. As Judt points out, this
refers to salaries only, not corporate perks and financial assets.

While the rich get richer, the working and middle classes work harder for
less money and fewer benefits. In 2000, Americans worked on average 1877
hours, hundreds of hours more than workers in the European Union. One reason
for this disparity is that Americans aren’t allowed many paid vacations. In
2000, we averaged just four to ten days a year. By contrast, according to
the Center for Economic and Policy Research, legally mandated paid leave for
Austrian, Danish, Finn, French and Spanish workers was 30 days per year.
Brits got a guarantee of four weeks and the hard-working Germans 24 days.

We Americans talk a lot about family values, but our policies don’t match
our rhetoric. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights promises “the right
to parental leave following the birth or adoption of a child.” This is a
crucial time when parents and children bond. Portugal, one of the poorer
countries in Europe, offers a three-month leave at full salary. Few
Americans receive anything close to that kind of benefit.

Though we spend more money per capita on health care than any other country,
and have excellent medical professionals and the latest technology, our
health outcomes, in many medical categories, rate below that of most
European countries.

This is a matter of access rather than medical care. Americans with health
insurance get quality care. But the many millions who don’t have insurance
can’t afford medical check-ups and can’t seek treatment until they are faced
with very expensive and often life-threatening emergencies.

In Europe as in Canada, universal health insurance is a given; all citizens
are assured access to health care as a right rather than as a benefit of
employment or an individual out-of-pocket expense. As a result, average life
expectancy is higher in most European countries than it is in America. This
discrepancy is based largely on our abysmal rate of infant mortality, where
we rank twenty-sixth, just above Lithuania.

This is a function of poverty more than anything else. The administration
talks about being pro-life and of “no child [being] left behind,” but it
cares more about the so-called “unborn” than it does about family planning
and the health and well-being of real living babies, not to mention the
mothers who have them and the parents who raise them.

Government disinterest in children, parents, and families (in terms of
access to health care, amply-funded public schools, and affordable access to
higher education) is reflected in hardening class structures and the
diminution of social mobility.

David Brooks, the conservative columnist for the N.Y. Times, worries that
“the family you were born into matters more and more to how you will fare in
life.” In his column of 1/25/05, he talks about America’s new aristocracy,
which is not based on merit, as is our tradition, but on inherited wealth --
the accumulation of which, one must add, is a deliberate goal of Bush
administration policy-makers.

The United States used to be admired as “the land of opportunity.” We revel
in classic stories of the children of immigrants and blue-collar workers who
rise into the middle class and sometimes even earn great fortunes. This is
not happening as much anymore, and “that’s a problem,” Brooks says, “because
we are not supposed to have a hereditary class structure in this country.”
But downsized and outsourced, with weaker unions, stagnant wages and
shrinking benefits, it’s becoming harder for the middle-class, much less the
working and unemployed poor, to rise above a social status dictated by
birth.

On the other hand, there are some “firsts” that Bush can boast about. We’re
first in the size of our government’s budget and trade deficits. We’re the
world’s greatest consumers, even if most of it is financed by credit card
debt, meaning that we’re number one in the world when it comes to living
beyond our means.

We’re also champions in using up the world’s resources. The average American
uses more natural resources than any other person in the world. But that
word “average” is tricky here. It’s the very rich that consume most of the
resources; it’s they who bring the national average up.

We’re also number one in many categories of international pollution. With
just five percent of the world’s population, we’re responsible for 25% of
the greenhouse gases that are most responsible for global warming.

Most of these statistics result from long-term government policies,
especially deregulation, tax cuts for the very rich, laws inhibiting labor
organizing, and the influence that big campaign contributors wield over our
electoral politics. But the Bush administration pursues policies that
exacerbate all these problems.

That’s the real state of the union, more accurate than what George W. Bush
will talk about on Wednesday night. These are issues that the public needs
to talk about, even in the face of our government’s disinterest and silence.